A summary of things happening in the OpenStreetMap world

weeklyOSM 481

Mapping

Richard Fairhust points out, on the talk mailing list, that most EuroVelo routes are very out-of-date.

Toy libraries have been mapped in a very limited way on OSM for several years. Now a proposal to formalise the usage has been made. In the discussion on the tagging list a plea is made to ensure that libraries with facilities for children with disabilities are appropriately tagged.

Carlos Brys described the work of the local community following the government of Paraguay’s decision to create 10 new national routes and redefine the existing road network.

The author of the app GPSLogger, an open-source Android GPS tracker, blogged about his mapping activities during a holiday at Marmari on the Greek island Evia.

The voting for traffic_calming=dynamic_bump, intended for the new type of dynamic traffic calming, whose impact depends on the driver’s speed, has started.

The question about “structural separation” of roads and their representation as single separated ways in OSM led to a fierce discussion in the forum, in a changeset comment and an error note. As at time of writing , the discussion, which resurfaces regularly, has not led to agreement or other consequences but spilled over to the tagging mailing list.

Community

On talk-at the user PPete drew attention (automatic translation) to a changeset in which relation polygons of districts and municipalities in Tyrol and Voralberg were extended with the additional terms “municipality” and “district”. This led to a partly heated discussion and shows that there is currently no consensus. It also showed that the problems are dealt with differently in each country.

Habr.com/ru interviewed (automatic translation) Natalya Kozlovskaya. She explains how she came to OSM, suggests why so few women in Russia are active in OSM and tells, at the end, a funny story about the difference between mapping in winter and summer. 😉

Imports

Russ Phillips asked for the opinion of the local community on the possibility of an import of UK postcode data. As the data in question represent just a mathematically calculated centrepoint for each postcode, he received a lot of opposition.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

The minutes of the meeting of the Licensing Working Group on 12 September 2019 have been published. The topics were the Attribution Guideline, a guideline for machine learning with OSM data and a data leak from the iD editor that passes user data to Facebook.

Events

Christoph Hanser invites mappers to the first “Trufithon” (Trufi Hackathon), a mapathon to collect data for and work on the Trufi app, an app for public transport and informal traffic for Cochabamba, Bolivia.

If you ever wondered who is who at weekly/hebdo/semanal/semanario/… Betaslb published two photos taken at SotM2019 with the weeklyOSM editors.

The FOSSGIS, besides being the meeting for open geodata and software, is Germany’s main local OSM event. It will take place from 11 to 14 March 2020 and has started the Call for Papers (automatic translation).

Humanitarian OSM

Felix Delattre informs us about the development progress of the new HOT Tasking Manager and lays out the current roll-out plan.

MapSwipe, a mobile app used since 2015 in the humanitarian area for identification of settled places, has introduced two new functions as HOT and MissingMaps have reported. Volunteers can indicate where buildings are inaccurate or of low-quality and a rework in OSM is required following changes on the ground .

The USA independent media NPR featured an article from the freelance journalist Joanne Lu about the critical role of OpenStreetMap for the Hurricane Dorian response in Bahamas. The journalist also presented the vision of the Missing Maps Project to support OpenStreetMap before disasters arise. She was pleased to have rapidly mapped buildings and expected experienced contributors to come later and make corrections.

Maps

[1] Greg Sterling has written a eulogy for Mapquest, which still exists but nobody knows, and what a competitor’s search engine has to do with the decline. Some enterprises can take the correct use of (C) as an example of good behaviour.

switch2OSM

The Scandinavian gaming website IGN Nordic provides some insight about the upcoming augmented reality game Minecraft Earth. The map in the game is based on OpenStreetMap. Minecraft’s creative director recommends that players join OSM for editing, something that people with Pokémon GO in mind may hear with mixed feelings. The Guardianfeatured Minecraft Earth in article titled “Minecraft Earth is coming – it will change the way you see your town” and included three sections about OSM.

Syna, the network subsidiary of Süwag Energie AG, is providing a new (automatic translation) fault portal through which citizens and municipalities can report faults in street lighting. Until now, the online fault report was just a form. The portal is based on the GIS of Syna; OpenStreetMap is used as background map.

Software

MapTiler reports that Vector tiles from #OpenStreetMap in Rijksdriehoekstelsel coordinate system using the latest @OpenLayers v6 are ready to use.

Releases

With the release of 15390 JOSM has reached stable version 19.09. The new version makes layer handling easier by displaying the layer number, hence, allowing toggling between layers using shortcuts. The new version also includes a lot more medium and minor enhancements.

After approximately one year, the open-source relational database management system PostgreSQL has been upgraded to version 12. The new features include: improved performance, particularly of partitioned tables and index rebuilding, additional new functions, such as the SQL / JSONPATH-functions, optimisations of specific queries, and many more.

Did you know …

… of the list of OSM-related Telegram-Groups? If you notice a group is missing, feel invited to add it to the wiki.

… Martijn van Exel announced that there is a Machine Learning wiki page on the OSM wiki. Machine Learning (ML) is something that is often seen sceptically, for quality reasons as well as from a community building perspective. However, the increased transparency about ML activity in the OSM environment is welcome.

OSM in the media

The Austrian Alpine Club compares the four map types: OpenStreetMap, Outdooractive, Topo-Maps and the Alpenvereinskarte/Alpine Club Map used on alpenvereinaktiv.com in the latest issue of Bergauf. You can find it on page 22 of the printed edition, in the version for online browsing or the PDF edition.

Other “geo” things

Emina Demiri-Watson pointed to an article about the efforts of the British Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to employ satellite data to identify and map disease outbreaks among ash and oak trees.

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What is the idea?

weeklyOSM updates the community, on a weekly basis, about what is going on in the OSM Universe. weeklyOSM is intended for everyone, from experienced mappers to new OSM members. It is created by mappers and OSM enthusiasts. Contributors to weeklyOSM in all languages are always welcome. Due to the enormous workload (52 issues per year, no vacations, no holidays) new languages can only be set up if three mappers agree to cooperate.

The idea of weeklyOSM is to collect relevant OSM news from all over the world, process it and translate it into as many languages as possible. This should help to inform the community as comprehensively as possible and overcome language barriers.

weeklyOSM is independent of all organisations and companies. This applies to OSMF, HOT, FOSSGIS … and all other companies not listed here. Nevertheless, we would be happy if our current issue (in whatever language) would appear on the start page of the Wiki on an equal footing with “Use OpenStreetMap”, “Contribute free map data” and “Software Development”. We would also like to point out that the editorial staff are not subject to OSMF supervision.